The United States is poised to burn a lot more natural gas in the coming years to meet soaring electricity demand, potentially locking in decades of emissions that are raising global temperatures.
U.S. greenhouse gas emissions barely budged in 2024, despite huge investments the country has made in clean energy under the Inflation Reduction Act, a landmark climate law President Joe Biden signed. Market analysts say America's goal to cut heat-trapping pollution in half from 2005 levels by the end of the decade is now all but out of reach.
For power companies charged with keeping the lights on, natural gas looks like a reliable way to boost energy supplies for new data centers and factories, as well as consumer goods like electric vehicles and heat pumps.
Utilities have to "meet demand no matter what," says Ben King, an associate director at the Rhodium Group, an energy research firm. "And the way that they feel most comfortable and confident doing that is by [using] the same stuff that they've always put on the grid."
Failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will have its own consequences. The UN says the world needs to eliminate or offset all greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury to avoid more catastrophic impacts from climate change. Natural gas creates fewer emissions than coal when it's burned, but producing and transporting gas can release huge amounts of methane, a potent climate pollutant.
"The projections for business as usual are pretty dire in terms of changes in [the] climate," says Daniel Jacob, a professor of atmospheric chemistry and environmental engineering at Harvard University.
"I don't view this as apocalyptic," Jacob says. "But it makes a mess of our society."
Companies say they want clean energy, but they take what they can get
Over the next five years, U.S. electricity demand is expected to grow by almost 16%, according to Grid Strategies, a consulting firm. That's massive for an industry that saw power consumption increase less than 1% annually over the past 20 years.
There are already signs that a construction boom is coming in the natural gas industry.
GE Vernova, a manufacturer of gas turbines, expected to finish last year with 20 gigawatts of orders globally, almost double what it booked in 2023, Scott Strazik, the company's chief executive, said at a meeting with Wall Street analysts in December.
"I can't think of a time that the gas business has had more fun than they're having right now," Strazik said. The industry is also celebrating the election of Donald Trump, who promised to boost the country's fossil-fuel industry during his second term.
Companies that produce and make electricity from natural gas already have a dominant position in U.S. power markets. The fuel was used to generate about 43% of the country's electricity in 2023.
"That number is going to grow in the near term," says Cy McGeady, a fellow in the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "For how long and to what extent, that's harder to predict."
Data centers are driving electricity demand
Demand is growing in large part because companies are building data centers to power artificial intelligence, which uses a lot more electricity than traditional Internet. Grid Strategies says demand is also going up because of growth in U.S. manufacturing, and because businesses and homeowners are swapping out products that run on fossil fuels for others powered by electricity like electric vehicles.
Underscoring the challenge that increased demand poses, regulators warn large parts of the country might not be able to generate enough electricity over the next several years as old coal plants retire, increasing the risk of blackouts.
Fossil fuels aren't the only answer to rising demand. Businesses can cut back how much power they use, or draw from batteries when grids are short of electricity. And there's a big push to add renewable energy plants to supply more power. But industry analysts say regulations need to be streamlined so companies can build clean-energy projects and connect them to power grids faster.
Industry analysts say it can still be challenging to deliver electricity around the clock without creating climate pollution. New nuclear plants, for example, could play a key role, but "they're going to take a while to build," says Tyler Norris, a fellow at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.
So, some utilities are delaying plans to retire aging coal plants, and many are looking to burn more natural gas.
"It's an enormous challenge to meet the demand growth, period," says Chris Seiple, vice chairman of power and renewables at Wood Mackenzie, an energy consulting firm. "It's an even more enormous challenge to meet the demand growth in a decarbonized way."
What happened last year in the U.S. electric industry shows how hard it is to increase power supplies without raising emissions. Climate pollution from the power sector inched up as a combination of natural gas and renewable energy was used to meet a 3% increase in electricity demand, according to a preliminary assessment by the Rhodium Group.
Big electricity consumers say they want clean energy, Seiple says. But "they'll take gas-fired generation if that's the only thing that they can get," he says. "They'll even take coal-fired generation if that's the only thing that they can get."
Power grids that already burn a lot of gas are set to use even more
Even if the U.S. burns more gas for electricity, the amount of climate pollution from the country's power industry probably won't increase much, says King of the Rhodium Group, since companies will continue to cut out coal. But any delay in reducing emissions poses risks, because scientists say the world needs to move faster than it is now to rein in the worsening effects of global warming.
"Power sector emissions staying flat or creeping up slightly is not a step in the right direction," King says.
Last year was the hottest on record after global emissions reached a new high in 2023. In a hotter world, risks go up for more extreme heat waves, storms, floods and wildfires.
Late last year, Hurricane Helene tore through the southeastern U.S. before decimating mountain towns in North Carolina. That storm along with Hurricane Milton, which hit Florida about a week later, were expected to cost insurance companies up to $55 billion. Now, wildfires torching neighborhoods around Los Angeles are projected to cause damages and economic losses of up to $275 billion, according to a preliminary estimate.
It's also a troubling sign for other countries' climate efforts, says Norris of Duke University.
"If not even the United States or the richest countries in the world can make meaningful progress on our emissions reductions, then we're in very deep trouble from a global standpoint," Norris says.
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